The world is Changing for Better with Big Data

There are different perspectives and ways in which we define or understand ‘Big data’. Here are two of my favourite explanations apart from the standard “5Vs”.

• When the legacy tools are not able to manage and process data, it is Big Data.
• And on a lighter note, when data itself becomes part of the problem, it is for sure ‘Big Data’.

It takes enormous efforts and resources to bring insights and value out from the huge ocean(s) of data however that’s the same with gold mines. It takes efforts to get the real gold, but it’s worth it. There are uncountable applications in different domains and areas where Big Data technology is making our life better in so many ways. Let me try and summarize a handful of them:

National Security: Whether it is national security agencies or law enforcement bodies, they all are heavily dependent on big data technology. As these agencies/ bodies have access to the vast amount of data, and can utilize it for the best use, they are gaining the results like catching criminals, foil terrorist plots and make us all feel safe.

Businesses: In all the commercial domains like marketing, finance, retail, social media, e-business etc, Big Data is making a huge impact with a lot of return on investment and making life easy. As an example, advertising and marketing has been one of the leaders in the use of big data analysis to improve the sector. Big players like Amazon and Netflix have produced technology and services like “recommendation engines” which is taking the business to the next level altogether. This tailored marketing eventually helps the companies to be much more specific and focussed with right product advertising. Some other very common and effective applications today are Business Intelligence, stakeholder engagement (customers, employees, sellers, resellers, suppliers etc.), voice of customer, recommendations, taskforce management, revenue management etc.

Science: There have been so many great and large scale projects running worldwide with the help of Big Data. Have you heard about the project at “CERN” for example? A project with the Large Hadron Collider producing astronomical amounts of data designed to unlock the secrets of the universe. It is being run on a data centre which is owned by CERN which contains over 65,000 processors, however, it also relies upon thousands of computers across 170 data centres to analyse the data. This is not possible without Big Data technology.

Another example in this domain is space exploration where Bid Data technology is helping in a significant way.  One square kilometre array generates close to 750 TB of data every second. At its peak data collection throughput, this is hundred times larger than all the data on the internet. Without Big Data technology, this kind of data can never be processed or analyzed.

Healthcare: Big data analytics is accelerating the speed at which researches can work, for example DNA strings can now be decoded in minutes which can lead to the faster creation of cures and the ability to predict disease patterns.

One example is to identify, monitor and help with premature and sick babies. The doctors can now get a customized report with a lot of analysis of heart beat and breathing patterns. This leads to the development of algorithms which now allow for the prediction of infections 24 hours before any physical symptoms occur. Isn’t the wonderful? Only Big Data technology has made it possible.

CConclusion: While we continue to make more advancement in technology and specifically in Big Data and artificial intelligence space, we will see unimaginable possibilities and the betterment of the whole world. If we look at it from the job opportunities perspective, the opportunities are limitless which will keep growing. Thus as a ripple effect, by creating more and interesting jobs, it is helping in social and civic growth as well.